Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to cost analysis and more particularly to systems, methods and computer program products for analyzing and determining the expected costs to repair a vehicle.
Related Art
Consumers are periodically faced with the prospect of making decisions with respect to high-value items such as vehicles, and it is often the case that the consumers are not well equipped to make these decisions. For example, when considering whether to purchase or sell a vehicle, a consumer may be well aware of the price at which the vehicle may be bought or sold, but the value of the vehicle may be impacted by other factors that are less obvious. One of these factors is the expected cost to maintain or repair the vehicle. Frequently, a person who expects to incur major repair costs to maintain a currently owned vehicle will be motivated to purchase a new vehicle in order to avoid these costs. On the other hand, a person who is interested in purchasing a vehicle may be much less interested if he or she expects that the vehicle will require major repairs soon after it is purchased.
Unfortunately, expected repairs are often difficult to identify and quantify. Consumers often have only an anecdotal basis for determining whether they should expect major repair costs. For instance, the consumer may have heard rumors that vehicles manufactured by a particular car maker begin experiencing electrical problems when they are five years old, or may have transmission problems after 60,000 miles. At best, consumers may have access to information that manufacturers or others collect using relatively subjective survey methodologies. Ultimately, consumers may simply have to rely on their intuition or “hunches” in making decisions about whether to buy or sell vehicles.
It would therefore be desirable to provide tools that enable people (including consumers, dealers and others) to more accurately and objectively determine which repairs may be expected for a vehicle, and what the cost of those repairs will likely be.